The payoff of a stilted conversation

I've been trying to write this post for a really long time

Events update:

April 17: Community Show and Tell!

Subscriber update:

I’m down one paid subscriber womp womp. But up seven free subscribers!

Online store update:

Just launched: The Rosefinch Canadian Makers Surprise Parcel. It’s a very charming way to support our work here!

Update update:

My life is pretty cute, everyone. Ergonomics be damned, I’m curled up with my laptop next to to a sleeping Haritha and Bun Bun and Tristan (and a bag of Black Forest Cake marshmallows and a water bottle I don’t drink enough water from).

I started writing this on a Saturday, which is unofficially a day I don’t have to speak with my face to anyone other than Haritha. Monday through Friday I have a lot of client meetings over video, which I find increasingly exhausting. And Sunday is Crafternoons at the café, the joy of my week but still a drain on my social battery!

So on Saturdays I’m trying to give myself permission to stay in my pyjamas and not be perceived. That means that instead of braving the combination of a chilly morning and a gathering of the Community Garden, I have so far stayed put.

A drained social battery is honestly a huge milestone, and shows how far things have come since I started documenting this whole process. Back then, we were still struggling get all of our permits—which left me drowning in too much shame and guilt to engage meaningfully with anyone. I would often feel so lonesome that I’d end up in hopeless tears about it¹.

It might seem like all of that cleared up once we finally got our doors open, but it wasn’t actually that simple. Even after we’d been in business for a full year, I was still feeling very at sea when it came to community relationships, nevermind actual friendships. I was just sort of … waiting for it to start happening².

Lucky for me, the TikTok algorithm served up this video from Wildlin Pierrevil:

@notwildlinThis is one of my hills

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It was uncomfortable, but I was riveted. One passage in particular held up an mirror to how I’d been operating:

"Y'all get on here and you talk about, ‘there's no third spaces, there's nowhere for people to hang out’. But you actually don't have the social skills to even engage with people who are not already pre-vetted. You don't have the social skills to engage with a wide array of people from various backgrounds that you don't already know, to gather in a third space with. That's weird. That's not good."

It was weird. And it wasn’t good. But it was true. I was literally sitting in a third space that I owned—which at long last had all the physical infrastructure for creativity and connection—but I lacked the nerve to simply post, "Hey, would anyone like to gather here on Sundays?"

What was I so afraid of? Rejection, mostly. The possibility that I'd put myself out there only to have people ignore the invitation. In my anxious imagination, a poorly attended event would be proof that I didn't belong here, that I was an outsider who had misjudged what the community needed. It would be confirmation that I’d never have friends here.

I wasn’t prepared to face those risks, so I'd been hiding behind logistics.

But Pierrevil's message was clear: stop complaining about a lack of third spaces when you're not willing to put in the work to create and sustain them. Community doesn't just happen. It requires someone willing to be vulnerable enough to make the first move, to extend the invitation, to create the space for others to step into.

So in true fake-it-till-you-make-it fashion, I decided to just … go for it. I started planning events here, and I haven’t stopped.

It was very scary at first. Honestly, it’s still kind of scary. But it’s also working. In the last several months we’ve hosted a ton of truly magical happenings (check out this post and this post and this post for some lovely examples), and I really feel like life-changing connections have happened at each one.

These events weren't super complicated. They didn't require elaborate planning or perfect execution. They simply required me to extend the invitation, and be willing to engage with whoever showed up — regardless of how much we did or didn’t have in common.

To be clear, I’m not at all saying that we need to work to find common ground with people whose values are in direct opposition to our own humanity. I have no patience for cheerily hosting transphobes and racists. I’m saying that to build community, we need the social skills (or willingness to develop those skills) that will let us welcome and engage with a stranger. Even if we don’t already have an existing cultural shorthand and social ease.

This means figuring out that the retiree who doesn't get my internet jokes shares my enthusiasm for Canadian labour history. It means finding connection with the shy parent who moved here from the city—even though I I don’t have kids myself. It means creating conversation in a group of people across generations, class, and sensibilities—not letting awkward moments derail the potential for genuine connection.

More simply put: Community-building isn't about curating a room full of people who are all the same. It's about creating bridges between different islands of experience, and finding joy in those unexpected intersections.

One of those joyous intersections has been with Irving, our 88 year old next door neighbour. He plays Newfoundland folk music cassettes in his garage all summer, providing a perfect soundtrack to our adjoined backyard. He was blasting Black Velvet Band when we first arrived in June 2022, and came right over to say hello and tell us we'd never leave Port Medway³.

Irving used to pass by the store all the time on his daily walk to the wharf. Then I started scooting out to intercept him for a chat about some local news I’d heard or to ask him a question about our village. I’d always end with an invitation to come in for coffee sometime—especially as it got colder. He eventually did, and now he is in nearly every day delighting us with his colourful stories⁴.

I guess this what eliminating loneliness actually looks like. Not some grand, sweeping initiative, but a series of small, consistent and vulnerable invitations to connect. One pulled-up chair, one singalong, one stilted conversation, and one labyrinth walk at a time⁵.

Anyway, the beautiful (and admittedly corny) irony is that in working to eliminate others' loneliness, I stopped feeling so lonely myself. I’m collecting a lovely crew of friends and co-conspirators that seemed completely out of reach this time last year, and I’m so thankful.

Wildlin Pierrevil

if you somehow end up seeing this post, you eat free here forever.

1. I wrote this about it, which inspired a super vitriolic Facebook post and accompanying thread from a local ding dong. Haritha kept an eye on it for me, but I never actually bothered to read any of it.

2. This is unlike me! I hate when people say “If you build it they will come” so much that I will probably one day write a stand-alone post about it. (Spoiler: If ghost baseball players are not your target audience, it might not apply!)

3. This sounds like the start of a Stephen King book but we think it was meant in a nice way!

4. He is pretty sure our retail manager Suzanne owns the place, he enjoys teasing Wake about their colourful outfits, he has A+ banter with both Lori and Laurie, and he’s always praising Haritha for how works every day. Not inaccurately, he also says that all I seem to do is sit around and laugh really loudly at things.

5. If you’d like to support all of this community building, The Rosefinch Canadian Makers Surprise Parcel is a very adorable and wholesome way to do that!